


Gifts

by Missy



Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dancing, F/M, Falling In Love, France (Country), Future Fic, Paris (City), Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11390481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Tina goes to France to write during the gap between her first year of college and her last year of high school.Turns out there's an old friend waiting for her there.





	Gifts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaraJaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraJaye/gifts).



> Written for SaraJaye as part of a Fandom_Stocking gift! They requested some Tina/Josh fic, and I was happy to provide!

Tina Belcher is eighteen when she breaks up with Jimmy Junior for good. It’s not him, it’s her , she promises, as he obliviously stares at the football game playing out over their heads. She’s meant for something incredibly important, she explains – a writing program in France that Mister Frond insisted she apply for to make her college application look better. He seemed almost overly delighted that she’d managed to score a victory. 

“I’ll call you sometime, maybe,” she says.

He shrugs and stuffs a burger into her mouth and she sighs. Maybe it’s time to cast a wider net while she’s expanding her horizons, as her mother has reffered to this trip.

Maybe it’s time to forget him for good.

*** 

She has a tiny apartment several miles away from the heart of Paris. It’s clean and orderly and is filled with piles of novels she reads between classes and bites of pastry. One of her friends from school, Annalise, gets them tickets to an outsider performance of The Danube. 

She recognizes him right away, dancing at center stage, leading a troupe of men on enormous feather headdresses. He winks at her during the bows, and she takes a chance and waits for him by the stage door.

He grins at her. “So are you a one-boy girl yet?”

She cocks her head. “I’m a no-boy girl. How do you feel about pastry shops?”

Tina thinks to herself for just a moment that she sounds like Bad Tina. Who might be who French Tina is, only without the hair clip.

**** 

On their fifth date, he takes her to the Eiffel Tower and they walk around giggling, silly as the tourists they are, clinging to fingertips, wide-eyed and wondering.

“This is perfect,” Tina realizes, then realizes she’s never experienced a moment quite as perfect with any other boy in her whole life.

“It really is.” Josh sounds about as overwhelmed as she feels. Lights are spinning everywhere, and it’s just like her favorite fantasies only this time it’s real. 

The words bubble up and out of her throat without “Maybe right now’s the perfect time for a kiss? Maybe? Wait, did that sound too desperate?”

But Josh takes both of her hands in his and he kisses her, right on the mouth in front of the Eifel Tower, and her heart jumps in her chest, a thousand costumed dancers in furled skirts jumping higher and higher and higher.

She smiles when they part. This is perfect. Really perfect, for the first time in her life. She falls instantly back in love, just like a heroine in a storybook.

“You’re really beautiful,” he says, without prompting. And that is how the story really begins.

*** 

They come home together a year later, with a completed novel in Tina’s knapsack, a scholarship at a dance school for Josh, two bottles of French wine for her mother, a stock of chocolate almond milk for Josh, fancy cheese for her father, a tiny brass toy canon for Louise and a farting rubber hippo for Gene.

And there’s one more gift that barely passed customs. A ring on her finger, slowly turning it green, the zirconium gem glowing promises back at them both.


End file.
